Acceleration & Adaptation has gone punk, Healthpunk!

The Great Reset: A Healthpunk Vision

We are proud to announce that our short story, "The Great Reset," has been published in the volume 3 of the Health Punk essays series: Occupational Punk—Everyday Odyssey. This short story, to be found at https://healthpunk.co/project/the-great-reset, is part of a pioneering contribution to the emerging genre of Healthpunk storytelling, which combines speculative fiction and international futurisms to challenge conventional paradigms in healthcare and social services. The pdf version can be found at https://healthpunk.co/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Maric-et-al-2025-Occupational-Punk_3.pdf

The Story

Set in a near-future world on the brink of collapse, The Great Reset follows the formation of a global governance institution, the Assembly, and its reliance on an Artificial General Intelligence named Veritas to confront humanity’s existential crises. Through the lens of occupational therapy and occupational science, the story examines the limitations of productivism and consumerism, ultimately proposing a revolutionary new social contract centered on meaningful, sustainable occupations rather than work and material accumulation.

At the heart of the narrative is Jacira, an occupational therapist from Brazil, whose frank dialogue with Veritas sparks a transformative vision for humanity—a "reset" that reimagines the purpose of human activity and the role of technology in fostering planetary harmony.

Why Healthpunk?

The Great Reset exemplifies the core ethos of Healthpunk: bold, creative, and innovative storytelling that invites us to transcend entrenched logics and policies. Drawing on speculative fiction and diverse futurisms, this genre envisions hopeful yet radically different possibilities for healthcare, social services, and the shared future of our planet. Healthpunk challenges us to dismantle outdated systems and embrace new, creative approaches to collective well-being.

Join the Movement

The Great Reset is more than a short story—it’s an invitation to rethink human purpose and the systems that shape our lives. By imagining futures that prioritize flourishing over production, this work contributes to a growing movement toward transformative, occupation-centered change, nurturing our occupational imagination. In all, Occupational Punk, Everyday Odyssey unites 18 unconventional voices worldwide to reimagine occupation through fiction and commentary.